Originally Posted by
barney
You're one of the more rational posters on here and make some good points especially about the countries not at Euro 2012. That said, we shouldn't be just benchmarking ourselves against those sides or the top sides. What it comes down to is:
1. Are we happy with our performance and do we think it was as good as it could be? I don't think anyone could honestly answer yes to that.
2. Were there extenuating circumstances? Yes, there were some injuries but, even allowing for that, I don't believe that Spain or Croatia are as far ahead of us as we made them look.
3. Did the whole team, or most of them, underperform? If one or two players underperform, then you look at those players. If 6,7,8+ players underperform, you have to look at the manager. I would challenge anyone to argue that we didn't have that many players below their best.
Therefore, Trap is culpable. He is a great manager, a legend of the game, who did well to get us qualified (some luck notwithstanding) but he is primarily responsible in my book for a very, very disappointing showing at these championships.
I agree with you re the England thing but it goes deeper than football and is a cultural problem. How many 15-18 year olds speak another language like German, Dutch, Italian, French or Spanish and are talented footballers. Very few I'd bet. It would be so difficult at that age to go to a foreign country, on your own, where you don't speak the lingo and you're going into a different culture. We, as a country, aren't good at that. If a foreigner doesn't understand us in their country, our solution is usually to speak slower and louder.
Football wise, our culture (and England's) and mentality is not good which I've mentioned in another post.
Bookmarks